


Night Shift

by PrinceofBadassery



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Janitor Bucky Barnes, M/M, Student Tony Stark, Tumblr: imaginetonyandbucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-07 00:52:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14069331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrinceofBadassery/pseuds/PrinceofBadassery
Summary: Fill for the ITAB prompt: Bucky is a janitor working at MIT, he finds Tony holed up in the lab, sick.When Bucky takes over a shift from a colleague his prosthetic arm decides to clock out early, on his search for a screwdriver to fix it, he finds Tony coughing his lungs out in the lab.





	1. Chapter 1

Bucky didn't hate his job. There were just a few things that really annoyed him. Like when he had to take over a shift from his colleague unexpectedly and therefore stay longer than usual to clean out the trash cans in the laboratories. At least the labs were almost deserted this late, but unsurprisingly even the brightest of students still made a mess and how they weren't able to put their trash into the trash can instead of right next to it surprised Bucky time and time again. Unsurprising was also the huge amount of beer cans hidden behind a staircase like nobody would find them there. Yeah right, somebody had to pick them up one by one and clean the spilled beer off the floor. Why couldn't they party outside then at least Bucky wouldn't have to scrub the floor.

Bucky was almost done with his round and he only had a few trash cans to empty in the engineering department, which had one advantage that he didn't have the risk of finding some hazardous material in the bins like in the bio or chem departments. He was ready to call it a day and get home, take off his prosthesis, rub his sore muscles and relax with his cat but apparently his prosthetic arm had other thoughts and decided to clock out early with an unpleasant crack and a clank and then a tiny plink as a screw dropped out of Bucky's sleeve and onto the floor right before the trash can he had been in the process of emptying into his cart followed suit.

His left arm was dangling awkwardly from the elbow joint and Bucky cursed. It wasn't the first time this had happened, he knew that particular screw became loose after a long day at work but he usually tightened it after the work at home and everything was fine. The extra work must have messed it up more than he thought and now the screw was lost under a pile of soda cans, abandoned term paper drafts and granola bar wrappers. And right at the end of his workday too. This was not Bucky's day.

After a thorough dig through the trash Bucky found the tiny screw but he soon realized he couldn't do anything with it because he didn't have any tools with him, which he usually kept in his cart, but since this was his colleague's section of campus this was also not his cart and of course his backpack where he kept a small multitool was in the janitors' office in his locker, which was all the way across campus.

There had to be another way. Bucky searched the cart he had but came up with nothing except grease and gunk from spillovers, expected from a cart for trash collecting. Bucky wiped his hand and sat down on the floor and pulled his malfunctioning arm into his lap. He mentally already prepared himself for the walk back to the office. It would add another half an hour to his shift at least and that didn't include tidying the mess he had made spilling the trash and then rummaging through it.

Except he was in the damn engineering department of the best university in the whole country, he'd be damned if he couldn't find a fucking screwdriver around here. He had the keys to all the labs after all and so Bucky got up, tugged his unresponsive left hand into his jacket pocket and started to look around. A few students were still running experiments here and there and he didn't want to bother them, most of them weren't too fond of the cleaning staff and had no hesitation to show it. Bucky looked for an empty lab and soon found one that was dark and deserted. To his surprise, it was unlocked but that wasn't too uncommon, it's the students' problem if their research or experiments get stolen by their classmates, not Bucky's.

He didn't bother turning on the lights, the dim lights from various apparatuses and the monitors that had been left on was enough to guide him around and he really just wanted to find a toolbox and take it with him so he could fix his arm in peace, he didn't want to get caught tinkering in the lab.

A noise made him perk up from where he had been looking through the lower shelves of some cupboards, he had thought he was alone in the lab but that had suspiciously sounded like...sniffling. He got up and walked around the lab tables and sure enough hidden behind some futuristic looking contraption was a student sleeping on his laptop surrounded by energy drink cans both empty and full. Now that Bucky got closer he could clearly hear the soft coughs the other made in his sleep. 

A peak on the screen confirmed Bucky's guess that the guy wanted to pull an all-nighter to finish a paper. The title read "Using deep neural networks and sparse autoencoders for high-level feature generation in artificial intelligence" and he had been typing "ffffffff" with his left ear for 159 pages.

Bucky gently nudged his shoulder. 

The guy startled awake, leaving a "fffffgjhkkkkkk" on the screen and a very visible keyboard imprint on his cheek before he doubled over into a violent coughing fit.

"Woah, there." Bucky rubbed his back and after several long minutes the coughing turned into wheezing and the guy was able to compose himself, grab an open energy drink and down it in one go after which he took a few long-ish breaths and finally looked up. He first noticed his messed up document and cursed, then he noticed Bucky standing next to him.

"I'm allowed to be here." He coughed again and a shiver ran through his body. "You can't throw me out, no matter how good looking you are."

"Not really concerned whether you're allowed in here or not, buddy. You look like death warmed over, that's what concerns me." It was true, the guy looked horrible. His skin was paler than it should have been in the blue lighting from the laptop screen and he had deep circle under his eyes, his hair was a mess and he looked like he was going to cough his lungs out again any second. Bucky had also felt how hot the guy was when he had touched his back, he was definitely feverish. "You should be in bed with some Nyquil."

The guy waved at him and turned to his laptop. "'M fine. I need to finish the paper." He moved to open up another can of energy drink but he seemed he had neither the fine motor control nor the strength to do so. "Fuck." He dropped the can on the table and it rolled away knocking over other cans until it came to a rest against a pile of books.

"I came in here looking for something but I'm not going to leave you in that state," Bucky said. "Let me make you a tea or something, I know you folks always got a water kettle hidden somewhere, you always do."

The other swayed slightly, his eyes focusing and unfocusing on the screen in front of him, then he nodded. "Coffee."

Bucky rolled his eyes. At least it was a warm beverage. "Where?" He asked and then went to the corner of the lab the guy nodded towards. The water kettle definitely looked like it had been tampered with and Bucky hoped it wouldn't explode as he set it up. He looked through the cupboard and found several open packages of instant coffee powder as well as a sizeable stash of cup noodles. He prepared both which was tedious with only one hand available and it also meant he had to walk twice after he had finished both the coffee and the cup noodles but the guy looked grateful when he set both in front of him.

"Thanks." He mumbled as he drew in a long waft of coffee aroma, both hands around the mug. "Are you a student here too? Can't be, I'd remember someone as hot as you." The guy asked and Bucky had a to laugh a little.

"Do I look like a student?" He gestured to himself and the other concentrated really hard for a moment before he recognized the janitor uniform Bucky was wearing and with some effort, he squinted at his name tag.

"J. Barnes. So, Mr. Barnes, you don't look like the grumpy guy that usually mopes around here and tries to kick us out?"

Bucky groaned. "Please, I'm Bucky. I'm not old enough to be Mr.ed by college students. I took over a shift from a colleague. Anyway, I'll leave you to your paper, but please don't kill yourself with those energy drinks. I'm not paid enough to clean up a dead body."

Bucky turned to leave, he would need to find a toolkit elsewhere or just swallow the bitter pill and walk to the office, he already wasted a lot of time anyway it mattered little if he wasted more.

"I'm Tony." The student behind him suddenly said. "Maybe I can help you."

Bucky stopped and turned around. "Help with what?"

"You were looking for something." Tony wrapped his arms around himself and sneezed. "And if my deductions are right, there is something wrong with your prosthesis."

Bucky's mouth dropped open for a moment before he composed himself again. "How did you know?"

Tony shrugged, then grinned. "There was talk going around that one of the janitors not only looked incredibly hot but also had a bad-ass metal arm, a Hammer prototype as the rumors go, and you haven't used your left arm at all while preparing the coffee and cup noodles, thanks again by the way. So..." He trailed off and then gestured between them when Bucky didn't say anything. "Engineering problem," he pointed to Bucky, "genius engineering student." He gestured to all of himself. "Come on, get out of that jacket and show me."

Bucky was still too perplexed to say anything.

"I promise I won't steal any tech secrets in case you had to sign an NDA or something, not that Hammer has anything worthwhile to steal." Tony laughed.

Bucky couldn't believe his luck, this guy really was something and so he shrugged out of his jacket and fumbled it off his useless left arm. "Alright, I lost this screw earlier when I lifted a trash can and then my arm just collapsed and let's just say it wasn't a pretty sight and I have to do some additional overtime on top of the stuff I'm already dealing with." Bucky pulled out the tiny screw from his pocket and put it on the table. Tony pushed his books and the laptop aside, causing a bunch of empty cans to tumble to the ground which he didn't seem to care about. He blew his nose and motioned for Bucky to come closer.

"There's gotta be a chair around here, you don't need to stand around."

Bucky settled on one of the other chairs and placed his arm on the desk in front of Tony. "You know if you just give me a screwdriver I can do this myself. I did it a few times already, that thing just comes lose all the time."

"Oh, a recurring problem, interesting. Did you report that?" Under a few coughs, Tony rolled his chair around and collected a small case from the table that has the futuristic looking apparatus on it.

"Do you know how hard it is to get decent customer support these days? Also, I want to keep the arm and I kinda have a feeling that if I tell them it keeps falling apart on me they will find a new person missing a left arm and give it to them instead."

"Ah... seems like a Hammer thing to do." Tony opened up the case and pulled out a few tiny tools, much more delicate than what Bucky used to use.

"You seem to know a lot about Hammer Industries."

Still sniffling Tony started running his fingers up and down the metal plates on the arm. "Comes with the business... engineering and stuff."

"The screw goes in here." Bucky pointed to the tiny hole at his elbow.

"Yeah I know, but that won't fix your problem of it coming lose all the time now will it?"

Bucky looked flabbergasted and Tony. "You want to repair the whole thing? Can you do that?"

"Can I? Of course, I caaaa- ahchoo" Tony sneezed violently but had the decency to move his face into the crook of his elbow. "That is if I don't die first. Man, this flue is killing me."

"You need to get into bed ASAP."

"Yeah yeah, after this and then the paper and then I need to work on the semester project and then maybe." Tony took one of the tools and inserted it in between the plating and wriggled it around. Bucky got a little scared, but Tony looked like he knew what he was doing.

The metal plate suddenly popped open and Bucky blanched. "Is that supposed to happen?"

"Yep, perfectly normal. It's an access hatch." Tony used a small flashlight to have a better look and poked around in the innards of the arm with a little brush. "You got some gunk in there, aren't you cleaning this regularly?"

"Uh.."

"I guess not. I'll do some rudimentary cleaning but I think you might have to come back so I can get everything polished and oiled. Didn't you notice some other malfunctions? Like loss of motor control?"

Bucky thought about it for a moment. "I guess hand movements get a bit janky sometimes, but I could deal with it. What do you mean I have to come back?"

Tony shrugged. "Can't spend 3 hours doing maintenance when I have to work on a paper too. Okay, see, here's the problem." Tony shone the light into the inner elbow and Bucky had to squint a little to see what he meant. There was a tiny nut stuck in between two cables.

"That's what's supposed to hold the screw." Tony picked it up with a pair of tweezers and then wriggled it into the innards of the elbow, with his other hand he replaced the screw. "That should hold it for longer than a day, but it's still not ideal if it came off once it's going to come off again. This is a fundamental flaw in the design, who allowed this to be tested on humans. It could have caused a lot more damage than just some scattered trash. Imagine if you were carrying something more valuable." Tony huffed. "Incompetent fumblers, all of them."

Without a problem Tony replaced the plate he had removed and Bucky was able to move his arm again. He tested the elbow joint a few times and opened and closed his hand too, everything felt a lot smoother all of a sudden. He hadn't even noticed that the arm was getting less responsive over time, he had just gotten used to it.

"Amazing, I don't know how to thank you." Bucky could hug the guy. He had saved him so much trouble by fixing his arm, but Tony waved him off.

"It was nothing and you already did enough for me." Tony put his tools away and started to devour the almost forgotten cup noodles, which even from Bucky's point of view looked extremely mushy. "I meant it though," Tony said in between slurps and sniffling, "you can come back anytime. I'm here almost every day or night, depending on your perspective." He turned to his laptop and started holding down backspace. "And I'll probably be here all night tonight." He signed and then started coughing again.

Bucky frowned, Tony was sick and he had really come to like the guy and cared for him. "Do you need to finish the paper tonight?"

Tony nodded then rolled his eyes backward and made a grimace before sneezing violently and this time he wasn't so smart to cover his nose and he sneezed right onto the screen of his laptop. Both men made a disgusted noise at the sight.

"I guess I could write an email and ask for a few days more, the professor likes me I think, likes my genius in any case." Tony sniffled pitifully and turned to Bucky, his eyes were watery from all the sneezing and coughing. "You think I should do that?"

"Yes! You probably should have done that hours ago." Bucky said adamantly, but Tony managed a small smile.

"But then you wouldn't have met me." He wriggled his eyebrows in what probably should have been a seductive fashion  
if it hadn't been interrupted by another sneeze. "You want to know what I'm working on down here, Chappie?"

Bucky didn't know what that had anything to do with it but he was curious what Tony was doing down here. "Yeah, sure, if you write that email after that. Kinda don't want to lose my new-found mechanic to the common cold." Bucky scooted a little closer, assuming Tony wanted to show him something on his laptop. "I'm not that smart though, so maybe you need to dumb it down."

Tony just grinned and pressed a few buttons and a small application popped up with the letters J.A.R.V.I.S in white written over a dark blue background, the icon underneath reminded Bucky of HAL9000 only the "eye" was a swirl of blue instead of menacing red.

"Jarvis?" Tony said.

"Yes, Sir?" A distinctively British voice answered from the laptop. Bucky's eyes went wide.

"Please write an email to Professor Stane explaining to him why I need a few more days to finish the paper for his class. Choose an apologetic tone."

"Of course, Sir, how many details do you want me to include?" The voice asked confidently.

"Nothing embarrassing."

"I will not include your close call with death then."

Tony rolled his eyes. "He's so sassy," he whispered to Bucky.

"I have composed a message to Professor Stane, Sir."

"Display it." The email program opened up and showed the formulated message, Bucky was impressed, it already had the address filled out and when he quickly read it he found it included all formalities. He hadn't expected that. He really hadn't known what to expect.

Tony read through the email as well and with a 'Send it' command it disappeared and the email program closed on its own. The whole progress only took a few seconds and Tony hadn't touched the keyboard once.

"Jarvis is an AI I developed. He's going to help me with research and taking over some boring tasks like scheduling or writing emails." Tony gestured to the computer. "What do you think?"

"Holy shit, that was amazing. He's like a real person!" Bucky was really impressed. "I mean, I know about Siri and Alexa but that's a whole step above that."

Tony tsked. "Forget these amateur AI's. I am aiming to have a real personal assistant who thinks independently and actually does work for me. With those others, you need to spend more time on maintenance than you actually save by using them." He shrugged and closed the document with his paper, then shut his laptop down and yawned. "I guess I'm done for tonight."

That reminded Bucky of his own night which wasn't going to come to an end until he cleaned up the mess outside and he groaned "I still have to work to do." He got up and pulled his jacket back on. "I better get going, I hope you get home alright and get better soon. Thanks again for fixing my arm."

"Hey, no problem, it was my pleasure, it's not every day I get to work on a prosthesis prototype." Tony flashed him a dazzling grin, he had relaxed now that the pressure of finishing a paper was gone. Bucky hadn't noticed how handsome the guy was and yeah, maybe he was going to come back not only for some additional maintenance on the arm. He really liked the guy.

They said their good-byes and Bucky returned to the pile of trash in the hallway which unsurprisingly hadn't changed at all, but Bucky finished the work quickly with two arms available and was able to call it a day, or a night rather, after half an hour and go home.


	2. Chapter 2

The next day he once again took over the shift of his colleague but Tony wasn't in his lab, which Bucky took as a good sign and assumed the guy was getting some rest. He hoped at least, maybe he was just working from home, which was still better than sitting in a lab coughing his lungs out. He cared about the guy.

Bucky checked the lab every day during the time he had the additional shift but Tony didn't come to the university that time, at least not during the time Bucky was working. He found himself missing Tony and hoped he would get over his cold soon.

The arm hadn't acted up again, Tony's fix had worked wonders, and Bucky went back to his regular shift without further problems. He thought about pretending to have another problem just to visit Tony again, but he decided against it and one day after the end of his shift - several weeks after their first meeting - he went to the coffee shop off campus and then made his way down to the lab.

Bucky felt awkward and out of place in the university hallways without his janitor jacket but he pulled himself together and went straight to Tony's lab and he already heard Tony cursing at someone from two labs away. He approached slowly and peaked in, he had suspected another person but Tony seemed to be alone and was cursing at something on the table.

Bucky knocked on the door. "I come in peace." He held up both to-go cups as an offering and stepped into the lab. To his surprise Tony was alone.

"Bucky, hey, you came back! Is the arm acting up again?" Tony waved him over, he wore safety goggles and was holding an electric soldering iron, when Bucky rounded the tables he could see what Tony had been working on and cursing at. There was a tiny robot sitting on the table with exposed electronics moving his 'head' - to Bucky, it looked like a fancy go-pro camera - around and was making chirping noises.

"Shut it, Dum-E! I've got a friend here, be polite." Tony gave the robot a little tap on the head, then turned to Bucky. "Oh, you brought me coffee, I love you forever."

Bucky handed him one of the cups which Tony greedily drank from. "Dummy?" Bucky asked.

Tony nodded. "D, U, M dash E. My newest project, I am testing out an AI in a practical application but something seemed to have gone wrong while I transferred the program and he turned out a little funky. He keeps running into walls and breaking himself, but it's okay, he should still be functional and it will be interesting to see how the program develops. He should be able to learn from mistakes and eventually be able to navigate without problems. I'm going to write a paper about it once that happens."

Bucky eyed the little robot curiously. "That is awesome. He looks a little bit like Wall-E! Except less square and without claws."

Tony laughed. "I was a bit inspired by Wall-E but I'm waiting to give him something to grab with until he learns to not run into things." He leaned back against the table and took another sip of his coffee. "So what brings you here? Arm's doing okay?"

"Yeah, the screw hasn't come loose again thanks to you." Bucky demonstrated by bending his elbow a couple of times." I'm off my shift now and just thought I'd visit you. Make sure the cold hasn't killed you." Bucky shrugged and smiled shyly. "But I have to say you are looking good, great even."

Tony actually blushed and rubbed the back of his neck. "Uh.. thank you." He hid his face behind his coffee cup and they both fell into an awkward silence.

"Uh." They both started at the same and then stopped and laughed. "You first," Tony said, grinning.

"I was wondering how'd your paper go?" Bucky said, sipping his coffee and trying to be as casual as possible about it.

"Good! Really good! I had the genius idea of having Jarvis write the paper."

Bucky choked on his coffee. "You did what?"

"I let an AI write a paper about AI learning." Tony grinned mischievously.

"And that worked?" Bucky was flabbergasted.

"It did! It took a while but eventually, Jarvis managed it. He got stuck in a loop for a while and I thought I'd have to write it myself after all and refine his program some more but he gathered information about AI learning techniques and then implemented the processes into his own code and then he was able to write a paper about it. It was amazing to watch while I sat sniffling in bed."

Bucky's mouth was hanging open. "What kind of genius are you? Holy fuck. Why are you even talking to me, I'm dumb as bread!"

"Hey now! Don't call yourself that. You're able to repair your own arm." Tony pointed out. "And you understand what I'm babbling on about."

"That's hardly an accomplishment. I just put the screw back in and I didn't even do that right, you had to fix it properly. And that I understand anything you're talking about - " Tony shut Bucky up by putting his finger over his mouth.

"You're not here to talk about my paper, are you?" Tony lowered his eyes at him but didn't remove the finger from Bucky's mouth and Bucky had to use his free hand - his left - to remove it to talk again. He didn't let go though and wrapped his metal fingers around Tony's flesh and bone ones.

Tony was right, he had been curious about the paper, but that wasn't his main reason why he had come back. Over the past weeks he couldn't stop thinking about Tony and coming back to the lab and seeing him again, seeing that dazzling smile again, had screwed him completely. Bucky had to admit that he had crushed fast and hard and had wanted to ask Tony out. But now, knowing how far apart they are intellectually had really taken the wind out of Bucky's sails. He wasn't sure he should even try.

Tony looked at him, his deep brown eyes searching Bucky's. "Come on, spit it out, Robocop."

Bucky's mouth was suddenly too dry to talk and his heart was threatening to burst out of his chest. "I-..." He didn't get any further because in the next moment he felt something sharp poke his side and he jerked away from the desk with a gasp. "What the hell?"

Tony laughed before Bucky realized what had happened. On the desk, Dum-E was wriggling his head at him and rolling back and forth making clicking and chirping noises sounding very much upset about something.

"You were taking too long, terminator," Tony smirked and then he had the audacity to wink and Bucky's face turned beet red.

"Fuck, just... go on a date with me, okay?" Bucky blurted out clasping Tony's hand with both of his and hoping he didn't sound too pathetic.

Dum-E's chirping turned in a long warbling as he spun on his own axis in a little happy dance. Bucky was thoroughly confused but tried to focus on Tony who was holding back a laugh.

"Right now?" Tony asked, grinning from ear to ear.

Bucky blinked. "Uh...sure, if you got time." That had come entirely unexpected but Bucky took what he got and went with it.

"You know where to go?" Tony removed his hand from Buckys and packed away his laptop, pulled on his jacket and then picked up Dum-E. Once he got the robot securely under his arm he took his coffee cup again. He bounced on the balls of his feet looking extremely eager to get going.

"I'll figure something out," Bucky said and moved to wrap his arm around Tony's shoulders, who leaned into the contact immediately giving Bucky the courage to pull him to his side. This had turned from very confusing to amazing in a matter of seconds. He took the initiative and led Tony out of the lab grinning from ear to ear the only problem now was where to go for their date because Bucky had no idea.


End file.
